What fun, finding a discussion of a song I learned from the Burl Ives version back in the early 60s! We're going to try singing it at our Eng. Dept. student club here in Stockholm, so I got interested in what the phrases actually mean.

A couple of ideas, not all necessarily probable:

1. I like the thought of 'birch rhine', a wine parody of 'birch beer' (or maybe it existed, like dandelion wine?), and 'tart wine'. Line 1 seems to be all about drinks, and the whole verse about foodstuffs, so I don't see how 'birch rind' would fit. (A parodic element comes last, like 'turpentine'.)

2. Could 'crackies teeth' be a kind of seed? It's got to be something to eat (although there is 'turpentine').

3. (William Jennings) Bryant never won a presidential election, so I suspect that 'in the blues' means 'was down in the dumps' (recorded in the OED as early as 1741); those two lines are about politicians, not boxing (the next two lines). There's also an off-hand chance that it's a reference to being 'true-blue' (the Cross of Gold speech, being uncompromising).

4. The Saratoga Lancers, like most such dances, had head couples, so maybe Granny was the head lady, as some of you have been hinting?

5. Muskets from the rack: I think of a long rack at waist height, as in an armory, perpendicular, rather than over a mantlepiece.

6. The devil haul ye: the is surely a reduced form of , rather than the full-vowel /ji:/ of the old nominative form ("Abandon all hope, ye who enter here").

And nearly a century later, it's still fun!